In traditional Chinese Checkers, you must move your marbles into the opposite goal triangle before your opponents manage to fill their own. The game is won as soon as the opposite triangle is completely filled with your colour marbles. To prevent players from blocking the goal, outjump towards the center (but not sideways or backwards) is mandatory if an enemy marble is placed adjacent to a marble still within the home zone. Players are not allowed to move into any enemy goals (except their own home zone).
Players alternate turns, moving one marble at a time. A marble can step to an adjacent empty space or it may jump over an adjacent marble, of either colour, into the empty space directly on the opposite side. A marble may continue jumping as long as possible, or the player may choose to stop early. No marbles are ever captured in Chinese Checkers. Despite its name, Chinese Checkers has no historical connection to China. The game is a variation of the 19th-century board game Halma and entered the commercial market in the 1930s.
It is much faster to advance by chaining a series of jumps than by sliding your marbles forward one space at a time. The most effective strategy is to arrange your marbles in long, continuous sequences that can be jumped over, creating a kind of bridge toward the opposite side. Just be careful that your opponent doesn’t end up using these bridges more effectively than you do.
• You can download my free Traditional Chinese Checkers program here, but you must own the software Zillions of Games to be able to run it (I recommend the download version).
• See also Chinese Checkers (The Diamond Game).
© M. Winther, 2026 March
